So this isn’t making much news outside more liberal circles and for some reason I feel it just doesn’t have the traction that the dick dynasty (NOT a typo) story does. Of course, because its much more important, and relevant.

So, I’d like to start at what is probably the news story that really put an exclamation point on the whole income disparity thing, the infamous 47% comment. Personally that comment, although basically the rallying cry for the Republican party for the last 100 years or so, and the Democratic party before that (when, of course they were keeping Black folks from voting as well, sound familiar?)…well actually it has been the rallying cry for BOTH parties pretty much from their inception…but I digress…that comment should lose every election in a democratic republic such as ours pretends to be for whatever party claims it.

Worse yet, there are many people who are a part of that 47% (actually, depending on how you work it out mathematically, the 47% is actually the 99%, especially if you figure in little things like roads and schools, cops and fireman, you know inconsequential shit like that) who had a little hard on in their dark, angry little souls over that one. I’m sure I’ll be getting to that angry white people voting against their interests because someone shouted “negro,” or “Hispanic” loose in a crowded RNC convention.

Since then, the President, pundits, and the rest of the mediatocracy have dubbed this the year of the income unequal. About 200 years too late.

Now this asshole.

Giving kids free lunch is the least of our problems. Some kids ONLY meal during the day are these “lunches.” And its been proven time and time again that hungry kids have more trouble learning, are more distracted and in some cases violent.

But this guy, all he can see is poor kids with their hands out. Poor kids who are leaches on society and will never amount to anything unless they get a healthy dose of you don’t get something for nothing…just like this guy…

Because, you know, school lunches don’t kill, kids who get school lunches do.

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Google, Yahoo, Apple, Twitter, companies that what your data all for themselves.

Yeah, I said it.

Let me first say that I think the NSA’s Big Brother programs that have become a monster unto themselves, aided by the USA Patriot act and depending on who you choose to believe, ignored, unknown to or hidden from the Obama administration, are no friend to privacy. But the irony of these huge tech companies and their Ad driven business model, where big data, linked or not to personal information about you and me, getting at all angry about the government beating them at their own game, is stunning. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-01/what-google-knows-about-you

So how does say, Google, use your data? There are a few guesses, some really good guides ( http://mashable.com/2012/03/01/google-privacy-data-policy/ ) but really, who knows? We know they do a few obvious things, when you go surfing after shopping you see ads on the sides of many webpages that either replicate or closely match recently viewed sites and items. Google uses both your browsing and shopping histories to show you things you really WANT to buy. Your phone records (Apple and Google especially) are up for grabs, data transmissions, that site you don’t want anyone to see that you think is safe to view in a mobile browser, all recorded. Information we share on Facebook, our pictures, baby momma drama, anniversaries, divorces and breakups, all saved in a file somewhere…indefinitely.

I’m listening to that guy Snowden, he’s talking about how he doesn’t want to live in a world where every conversation is recorded, every work of art, ever silent but deadly…(okay, he didn’t say that but it was heavily implied, I’m sure I heard a pause and an ever so slight squeal) . I really don’t trust Snowden, it isn’t because I’m an “Obamabot,” although I do feel he’s taken way too much heat, but it’s because of statements like this, that pin the blame squarely on government and give no mention to huge corporate data mining and collecting that we take for granted.

Because now, government is the bad guy. Corporations are your friends.

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I am an American by birth. I find it difficult to feel “proud” of that, not mainly because of things my country has done to others like (and unlike) me, but because my definition of pride has nothing to do with belonging, it has to do with personal or collective accomplishments. Being American is neither an accomplishment, nor anything I have done, it just is. It is akin to racial pride, which I also do not understand. How can someone be proud of accomplishments achieved by a social construct? Further, how can someone be fully proud of something accomplished by people whose legacy is, on a daily basis, ignored, lessened or diminished, thrown into the “memory hole” and buried. We don’t know the half of what our forebears suffered through, this is especially true of racial minorities and most especially African Americans.

When I take a moment and think, really think hard about the legacy of racial bigotry, coerced divisions by race of poor from poor by the elites, the various ethnic minorities who have entered this country and been indentured, the subsequent divisive tactics used to keep everyone from truly seeking level footing and the legacy we are currently living, everything makes frustratingly clear sense.

I often deal with people who have no such perspective; they have no experience with the deep damage done by centuries of desperate clamoring for entrance into the dream of America. They do not have a sense of history, born in the mark they wear, and lived through every day. The younger generation (I am in my mid 40’s and remember the 70’s and its post racial/ethnic/orientation tumult well) seem to be in a state of stasis between feeling unusually entitled especially at either extreme end of the socioeconomic spectrum and being completely defeated by the deck clearly stacked against them when really they are as intertwined as power and privilege.

As an American, I find it difficult to be truly “proud” of this.

What I am is hopeful, even as time goes on and my hope is whittled away by our self-defeating responses to divisive rhetoric, I am still (marginally) hopeful.

I am hopeful that this is another transitory period in history, another readjustment, or maybe the storm before the fulfillment of the promise of this pluralistic dream we call America. I am hopeful because as Vaclav Havel said: “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”